August 21st

rotunda of NGA

selecting flowers 

portrait of a young man by 

Corneille de la Haye, 

French, artist active 1534-1574

water and light

early bug collectors painting

fun with the camera

crisp reflections water

strawberry shortcake

favorite indoor fountain topped by mercury 

detail of another favorite painting's fine hands

Portrait of a Merchant, c. 1530

artisit Jan Gossaert, Netherlandish 1478-1532

I went with Keith to the National Gallery of Art for Lunch. We had a great meal and a delicious desert. Strawberry short cake as seen above. Something about the mix of the red strawberry sweet & tart, rich whipped cream, mixed with yellow sponge cake is so good this time of year. We played with our cameras all around the gallery and looked at books and enjoyed the water fountains and a few rooms of masters artworks. I discovered a small work of art in the Dutch wing who's subject was insects and I had to document that for comparison with my bug pictures posted here recently. I am not the only artist interested in bugs! I think this artist Jan van Kessel had to use pin down techniques to capture his insects. Later I found a theme in my photos on my birthday at the National Gallery of water and details. This began with my favorite fountain in the central rotunda. The sculpture of Mercury who was the messenger of the gods and represents the arts is posed so deftly on the ball of his foot, above the smooth sound of water falling over the edges of his big marble bowl. It is very relaxing to sit in that round room listening to the water fall as people pass. Other pictures of water and light reflecting were outside in huge pink stone bowls of falling water under the sun mixed with shade from Oak trees. The portrait of a young man caught my eye years ago and became a favorite painting. This picture is only about a foot tall in that architecturally detailed frame it is a very intimate view that to me, speaks about love of youthful innocence. I wish I could get a better photograph of the young man's portrait, but the NGA's website has a good close up if you follow the link. Artworks on the wall with highly varnished surfaces are very difficult to photograph. I don't use flash because it only reflects back off the mirror like surfaces of the paintings' varnish. I believe flash also harms pigments in paintings, so it is annoying to see others use flash.  Another painting I like is a Netherlandish portrait of a merchant and in that picture all the details are amazing. I shot the hands but again on the NGA website they have better pictures you can see it all in very fine detail. Keith let me go where and do what I wanted on my birthday with the proviso that we needed to drop by the farmer's  market at Penn. Quarter just a couple blocks from NGA at 8th and D Sts., NW so he could buy more locally grown flowers for his ikebana arrangements blog. I was delighted to go there and find more fun things to photograph. We brought home a nice batch of flowers including richly perfumed tuber roses and a type of bright green pod on a milkweed related plant that is new in floral arrangements. On  Sogetsuatelier.blogspot.com   Keith's blog, where he posts his ikebana arrangements you can see them in the first photo, today. Look for one tall sunflower and the fuzzy green pods below. Thanks to Keith and everyone who sent birthday wishes, gifts and to all my friends and family for a happy day. Back at home I watched an engaging costume historical Merchant Ivory film on cable after our trip to the gallery called The White Countess  while Keith was in ikebana class. If you like Merchant Ivory movies this was their last one before Ivory died.  When Keith got home from his class we topped the day off with a cold salmon dinner, more cake and gifts. August 21st, 2008 was a delightful 53rd birthday. 

August, in the middle of

orange butterfly purple flowers

orange blackberry lily

brown moth on bricks

orange heirloom tomatoes 

1970's orange wall phone 

orange butterfly

orange monarch butterfly 

woodpecker on choke cherry tree

small woodpecker

orange cock's comb

Manassas finches with orange beak

Well, this weekend is cool and clear like last! What a delight it is to have perfect weather inthe middle of  August. I am  just home from another trip to Manassas where mom and I went to get some fruits and vegetables at the farm market after probating Dad's will with the court and dropping off some tax records. Orange was everywhere and I am moved to post some things orange but also birds and butterflies not to mention some bees and a bouquet of lovely cock's comb in a vintage yellow McCoy vase that Keith bought in a second hand store recently while I was watching laundry spin in the dryers. This morning outside while I was writing I heard a sound and noticed a little woodpecker on the crusty old choke cherry tree. It didn't mind me at all, so I pulled out the camera to take a few zoom photos of him among the vines.  I suppose there are a lot of bugs under that dead English ivy vine clinging to the crusty bark. The dead leaves have been falling all summer, crunchy under foot. I really enjoyed looking at this woodpecker chipping away at the tree. The zoom photographs didn't turn out as detailed as I hoped but still it is a record and that was the only bird I saw in the yard this morning. I saw the monarch butterfly on the butterfly bush's purple blooms and caught it drinking nectar. While in Manassas I got a photo of a couple of the exotic finches my brother Dave gave to my parents a year or two ago. The brown one is a Spice Finch and the orange marked one is called a Zebra Finch and they have different songs they sing when ever inspired. Usually they sing when my cell phone rings.  Also in my camera I have a shot of the arrangement that Keith made from leftover orange cock's comb and some sort of yellow dried flowers from last year. His arrangements this week for his Ikebana blog have been very exciting, even exotic and you can go see them here >>>> SOGETSUDC. I haven't figured out which arragnement is my favorite yet. Earlier in the week I was happy to take Keith downtown to buy a new seamless back ground paper to put behind our still life photos. I think he has become a really good flower arrangement photographer. I began encouraging him to try back in 1999 to do his own. I was surprised to learn then he has been working with flowers for many years and didn't have a professional portfolio and the reason was mostly because he didn't know much about making studio photographs. I didn't either but I knew we could figure it out.  

I do still live photos of  my books and boxes. The worst part of it is figuring what arrangement looks best and how to light them. Then while I was in Manassas I decided to go downstairs and get a quick shot of the orange wall phone. It has been there since originally installed in the late 1960's or early 1970's I forget which. Dad installed that dark walnut paneling in his rooms and there was an orange shag carpet and this matching orange phone! The rotary dial still works and the cord is about 12-14 feet long. That was before cordless phones so when I was in high school I used to talk for hours on that phone and wander around the room twisting the cord and pulling it over obstacles. I found another 1970's tabletop phone with a rotary dial in a deep red last week at the antique store. This week my mother bought it for me as a birthday gift. It is now connected to my phone line with a jack splitter so I can use both: the wireless and the corded phone on the same phone line. When the power goes out due to storms in this part of North East Washington, and it did last week,  I have a hard wired line now I can use for some calls in the dark. I haven't photographed the red phone yet but it makes me smile and feel good to have a touch of the past around that still works. Technology has changed  so quickly a little touch of the past is a bit of reassurance that not everything is out dated. Another thing I saw on my way out the door this morning to write in the garden was a brown moth. It was in the corner of a window. I disturbed it causing it to fly off to the brick wall in the stairwell. Even brown is lovely next to pink and purple gray bricks which some people might call red. 

Well, I am sure I have written too much and loaded way too many photos for a normal well edited blog post.  I am seeing beauty everywhere all the time and photographing what I see is such fun that I would like to show you them all, but I can't.  I have so many photographs  I can't keep up and posting it is a real challenge. I am slowly loading some up on  Flickr.com to my new web gallery that Keith gave to me. I just added a slide show feature to this blog and it scrolls through all the pictures in the flicker gallery on my "orange explains it all" page.  Next perhaps I will develop a book of photos on some theme with one of the new web based book publishers. They print out books of anyone who wants to pay a new technology I want to try out!

 I love to hear your comments. Please drop over to the blog and look at the bottom of each post for the comments icon to share your thoughts or send me an email directly if that doesn't work. 

Small Milkweed Bugs: adults and a nymph

small nymphs together

a pair up close

yesterday the big daddy

"Your bug is actually a Small Milkweed Bug, Lygaeus kalmii, one of the Seed Bugs." The pair mating on the orange day lily were right next to these swamp milk weed pods in my garden. I decided to look my orange bugs up, yesterday after going out to the yard and finding more of them, not a couple more, a few dozen more in a small swarm. See the first image of them grouped together on the swamp milk weed pod. I shook them up a bit when I touched the pod they were on, to see if I could get a better picture and they began to flee. All the big ones were gone from the day before, or out of sight and in their place were these little guys. I was pretty happy to find out they are a bug that lives on milk weed. The website Whats that bug.com is a great gardeners resource. They answer questions about bugs and show pictures people like me send in for identifications.

The Internet also has an extensive bug guide that tells more details about this bug in particular. For the full story on the small milk weed bug go here>>>

The bottom line is that they feed on the seeds moisture of the milk weed. I don't know if it will kill the seeds or the plant but I kind of doubt one would kill your host at a banquet. Next bug report will be on something less buggy and more butterfly I think. 

orange-black bugs

orange-black bug on the pod at center 

pair of bugs on the petal at center

up close bugs 

ant upon a pink day lily

Orange & black marked bugs were spotted twice yesterday and once again today on the orange double day lily and the swamp milk weed plants. What bug this is?  I have no idea. What a great color it has, the bright color may be to warn birds do not to eat its' sour carcass. I see  in the black marking on the back of its body a black heart. To see that detail, open the blow up of the first bug picture in the milk weed fairies.  I hope they don't harm the flowers. Then there was that tiny ant on one of the last pink day lilies. It is sweet there all alone, high in the sky, 30 inches off the ground on the lip of the flower's petal fearlessly searching for some nectar.